Sometimes I wish I had an editor.  The downside, of course, is that I would be fired immediately.  But it would be nice to be able to ask someone, “C’mon this is a clip-show, do I really have to do a post?”  I would happily skip it with permission, but my completist philosophy forces me to watch it.

For the very observant, there is a clue in the first few seconds that Dr. Strong, titular Voice of Reason, is screwed.  The brown swirly globe representing the alien home world in Birthright is sitting on the conference table.

Strong is escorted into the room and begins setting up his material. An elite panel from the government enters including Captain Furillo from Hill Street Blues and the poor man’s Dean Norris, Don S. Davis.  The cunning tease of the brown globe is ruined as it is in the prominently displayed right in front of Furillo.  Nice work, guys.

Dr. Strong says the United States, and possibly the world, is being overrun by aliens. Just before the government team immediately grants them amnesty, he  specifies — extraterrestrials.  He tells the panel he is scared to death.

Exhibit A is the aliens from The Sandkings which not-Dean Norris dismisses as a hoax. Furillo tries to dismiss the meeting, but the newest member on the committee says he would like to hear more.

Exhibit B is the doomed Mars mission from The Voyage Home which is dismissed as an accident.

Exhibit C is the space dildo from Caught in the Act, looking a lot more pointy than I realized when I first called it that.  Furillo doesn’t dismiss this one, he just calls it absurd.

One of the committee members compares that incident to the events in If These Walls Could Talk, despite there being no real similarity.  But it does set the clip up as Exhibit D.

Furillo asks for a break to put in some eye drops and slams the brown globe down on the table — a double-shot reference to Birthright.

The committee offers up a counter argument that logically proves nothing and is a waste of time.  They suggest that not all strange events are alien based, for instance the nanobots created in The New Breed.  So what?  That’s the kind of logic we get every Sunday on news shows where the guests are too stupid or biased or cowardly to point out real flaws in each others’ logic.

Exhibit E is the mysterious healing in Corner of the Eye.

Finally we get to Exhibit F, Birthright. Strong says Senator Adams was an alien, and that other aliens are poisoning the atmosphere for human in order to make it hospitable for their race, naturally using the 95 corrupt bastards in congress to unwittingly further their plot.

After the committee votes not to forward Strong’s data to the President, he suddenly remembers the importance of the eye-drops.  This leads to a conclusion that actually surprised me.

This episode doesn’t get much respect, but I enjoyed it.  I’m a sucker for seeing the old characters again whether in clip shows like this, or the unfairly criticized Seinfeld finale.

Post-Post:

• I just learned that “completest” is a word — that seems unnecessary, like “most unique.”  On the other hand, the perfectly reasonable word “completist” is not recognized by spell-check.
• Don S. Davis was actually in a Season 1 episode, but it did not involve aliens, so things did not get awkward in this episode.
• Sadly, Valerie 23 also did not involve aliens.
• Hulu sucks.